David's story of living with MND

Hi everyone,

My name is David, and I was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 2014. You can see me pictured above with my wife Kate and our children Erin, Isaac and Elih.

Like Rob, I’ve always been mad about rugby. It was during a game in my late thirties that I started to notice my body wasn’t moving how I expected it to. At the time, I just put it down to my age. But as I started to notice other signs of something being wrong, I took myself to my GP. After countless tests over two and a half years, I was told it was MND.

Kate and I try not to hide anything from our kids with regards to the disease. When they've come asking questions, we've answered them honestly and followed it up by saying, “but there's nothing you need to worry about in the immediate future. I'm still here, I can still wrestle with you – don't worry about it or let this linger over you”. For the most part they seem to have taken that on board.

Knowing that the MND Association and the local branch are there for us is huge. The MND Association has created storybooks for children to help them understand about the disease, which the kids used for a good while after we received them. They took the books into school to do a show and tell and, two years on, they occasionally ask after them now.

Keeping the finances has been a huge problem with me not being able to work for quite some time now. We went from being comfortable to being in a hole quite quickly and while we can cope with that, it's not fair on the kids. Keeping the kids in swimming lessons is an outlet for them to be active, it's tremendous fun for them and it’s an essential life skill. We were struggling to afford to pay for them because the annual cost for three children is something approaching £1000. The MND Association stepped in and covered the cost, which meant so much to us. Having that support takes a little bit of pressure off, which keeps us in good spirits. Knowing that the support and advice is there is priceless, but the big thing at the minute for us is keeping life as normal as possible for the kids – the MND Association has helped us out big time with that.

A huge thank you for choosing to run the Rob Burrow Marathon next year. Your support means the world to families like mine and to know that there are thousands of you flying the flag for MND awareness is absolutely incredible.